tanto cuore

Game Review: Motto Tanto Cuore

January 28, 2012 by Paul Beasi 4 Comments

A party in the park with our favorite maids!
Bits & Blips: Manga Bookshelf Edition

The maids are back, and this time they’re getting ready for a party! If you’ve read my review of Tanto Cuore (and if not, I suggest you do so now if you aren’t familiar with the game) then you know that I was pleasantly surprised by it. Motto Tanto Cuore by Arclight Games brings back some familiar faces along with some new ones, and introduces a mechanic that once again brings a new twist to the deck building genre. I won’t go into too much detail with what hasn’t changed and will instead focus on the changes and additions.

Celina Lavaux—High Class Maid in charge of decorations.

Setup and Gameplay:

Motto Tanto Cuore has a new group of maids called the High Class Maids and a new type of card called Preparation Cards which come in three types: Decorations, Food, and Cleaning. The Preparation cards are strictly victory point (VP) cards that players are trying to acquire during the game. There is also a “first master” card which will be given to the start player (chosen randomly) at the beginning of the game. These cards, along with ten of the thirteen general maids and the 1, 2, and 3 love cards make up the “park.” The general maids and the love cards are all considered “staff.”

The general maids have a new “skills” section on them with varying amounts of Concentration (Con), Effort (Eff), and Ingenuity (Dev). Why is ingenuity “Dev”? I used some online tools to translate the Japanese characters in that box and while Google Translate comes up with “Device,” other Japanese-to-English specific sites came up with different things such as imagination and ingenuity. Thematically, “ingenuity” made more sense to me than “device” so that’s the translation I used, while I suspect the publisher chose “device”. It doesn’t really matter much since you will mostly be concerned about matching the skills on the maids with the requirements on the Preparation cards.

In turn order, starting with the player who has the “first master” card, each player will select one of the nine High Class Maids. These maids each have a special ability that will take effect at the start of a player’s turn. Three of these maids are linked to obtaining Preparation cards, and one of them allows the holder to take the “first master” card from the player who is currently holding it. The remaining maids offer special abilities such as gaining additional servings, employs, callings, or love. One of them lets you return a “1 love” card to the park, useful for thinning out your deck.

A Cleaning Preparation card.

Once everyone has selected a High Class Maid, the players begin their turns again starting with the player who holds the “first master” card. First, the High Class Maid’s special ability (if she has one) takes effect. Next is the “Serving phase” where the player will use “servings” (actions) to play cards from her “side” (hand). The next step is a new phase called the “Work phase.” In this phase, players will gain Preparation cards. In order to gain a Preparation card, the following requirements must be met:

The player must have the equivalent High Class Maid.
The player must have played cards during the Serving phase with the correct amounts of skills required: Effort, Concentration, and/or Ingenuity.

If the conditions are met, then the player takes the top Preparation card from the pile that she qualified for and places it in her house (not in the deck). There is no limit to how many Preparation cards may be gained on a turn provided the player can meet the skill requirements for the next card. The Preparation cards get more valuable as the pile is depleted, but the costs get steeper.

Players now have an opportunity to “employ” (buy) new staff. Any new staff is placed in the “kitchen” (discard pile). Finally, the High Class Maid is returned to the park and the “Cleanup” phase is executed. Play now passes to the next player. At the end of the round, whoever is now in control of “first master” card will be the new start player.

Play continues until two of the general maid piles or one of the Preparation card piles have been depleted. When this happens, the current round is finished. Once all High Class Maids have been returned to the park in this final round, the game is over.

Artwork:

Once again, an incredible number of Japanese artists were brought in to design the cards. There isn’t much new to say here about the art that I didn’t already mention in my review of Tanto Cuore. Some people will like the art, some will hate it, and some will probably just ignore it. I like most of the new cards, although like before there are one or two that push up against my own personal taste boundaries, but none that outright offend me.

No one messes with the Hitmaid!

Is it different enough?

While some of the mechanics are the same, the introduction of the High Class Maids and Preparations gives the game a very different feel from the original. You have just five cards in your hand when you have to choose your High Class Maid. Do you have all the servings and skills you need to get a Preparation card? If so, then take the corresponding High Class Maid—unless someone else already did! If not, is it possible for you to draw the cards you need this turn? Is it worth the risk of taking a High Class Maid you might not ultimately get to use if you don’t draw the right cards? Or maybe you think you’ll have the right cards next turn, and you should get that “first master” card so you don’t miss out.

Points are a lot more scarce in Motto Tanto Cuore. You need to get those Preparation cards. Sure, there are other ways to get points, either from high cost general maids or with chamber maids as in Tanto Cuore, but not as easily. In this game, building a deck that will get you the right skills at the right time is critical. That’s not to say a deck that generates a lot of love (enabling you to buy those high cost maids) couldn’t be a winning strategy, but I have yet to see that play out.

Can I use cards from Tanto Cuore and its two expansions?

Yes! You can add any combination of 10 Private maids, the Illness and Bad Habit cards, and/or a single pile of 10 random maids from any Tanto Cuore set to create an 11th pile of general maids. The old games can expand the new one; I think that’s pretty slick.

Downsides:

Although there are instructions for two and three player games which involve removing some cards, this game will play the best with four players. With two players, there’s rarely any competition for the High Class Maids. I played it this way and enjoyed it, but games with more players were far more interesting. If you’re looking for a good two player game, I would stick with the original.

Also, we did notice that if one player manages to snatch up most of the Chiffon Loudenne general maids, that player’s ability to generate Effort became really powerful, making it pretty easy to grab the cleaning Preparation cards and run away with the win. My current thought is “don’t let that happen”, but that means one pile is going to get depleted rapidly in almost every game, since she’s an inexpensive card and you need three of her to really see her full potential.

Conclusions:

Overall, I’m very happy with this new take on Tanto Cuore. The role selection mechanic and new VP cards make for some different choices and strategies that I enjoy a lot. However, it probably won’t hit the table as often as Tanto Cuore, simply because it’s easier for me to find one or two players who are willing to play than it is to find four, and this game really shines with four.

An important note: Currently, this game does not have an English publisher, so it is only available in Japanese. Cardhaus games specializes in Japanese boardgame imports and you can get this one as well as many other Japanese-only titles there. You can find translated rules and cards on BoardGameGeek. All translations were provided by the magnificent Simon Lundström to whom I owe a great deal of thanks for his tremendous work.

Age: 12+
Length: 30-60 mins
# of players: 2 to 4

Designer: Masayuki Kudou
Pubisher: Arclight Games
Artists:

Tohru Adumi
COMTA
F.S
Akira Hayase
Kinoshita Ichi
Natsuki Koko
Souji Kusaka
Misa Matoki
Rin Minase
Nana
Aoi Nanase
Nishida
Fujii Rino
Poyoyon Rock
Ruchie
Sanba-sou
Ofuu Yamadori
Kazuno Yuikawa

Game Review: Tanto Cuore

December 8, 2011 by Paul Beasi 8 Comments

Do you have what it takes to be crowned “King of Maids”?
Bits & Blips: Manga Bookshelf Edition

Tanto Cuore (Italian for “Much Heart”) is a deck building game originally released in Japan by Arclight Games with the English edition published by Japanime Games in the US. The players play the “masters of the house” and will employ maids and use their services to help them expand their mansion to ultimately win the game and become the “greatest master”, the proclaimed “King of Maids”. While I was admittedly uncertain that the theme was something that I would be interested in, after playing it I discovered that with only one minor exception the fan-service is minimal, the cards are tasteful, and on the surface the theme is rather innocent. But is it a good game? Yes!

Deck building games came into popularity with the creation of a game called “Dominion” by Donald X. Vaccarino in 2008. Since then, the genre has exploded with many other titles using this mechanism. Personally, I was not very fond of Dominion. There is little player interaction (although later expansions addressed this somewhat), the art is not particularly to my tastes, and the game play feels very mechanical and dry with few paths to victory. Tanto Cuore addresses all of these issues.

But first, a primer on the mechanics of a deck building game.

Deck building is something that players of collectible card games (CCG) and trading card games (TCG)—such as Magic, The Gathering and Pokémon—are very familiar with. However in a deck building game, constructing the deck is actually part of the game as opposed to the precursor to the game. Everyone starts out with the same cards in their deck; generally weaker cards that will be used to gain more powerful cards. Each turn you start with a hand of cards drawn from your deck, play some cards from your hand, perform actions based on what you play, and then move the used and unused cards to your discard pile and draw a new hand of cards. Each player then repeats these steps in succession.

I ♥ you!

When you need to draw a card and your deck is depleted, you shuffle the discards. Thus, you know which cards are in your deck but not where they are or what order they will come up in. The strategy is building a deck that contains cards that will help you achieve your goal of getting victory points. If your deck gets too big, it might take you too long to get the cards you need and the chances of getting all of the ones you want in one draw get worse. Therefore, another important goal is getting the weaker cards out of your hand or upgrading them to better cards. The mechanisms for this vary by game, but in the end the idea is usually the same: build an efficient yet powerful deck that will yield you the most Victory Points (VP) at the end of the game.

Gameplay:

In Tanto Cuore, there are three categories of cards available in the “town” (play area): Maid cards, Love cards, and Event cards. The Maid cards include maid chiefs, general maids, and private maids. The Love cards have a value of 1, 2, or 3 “love”. The Event cards include Bad Habit and Illness cards. Every player’s initial hand has 7 “1 love” cards and 3 “Colette” maid chief cards which do little but are worth 1 Victory Point (VP) at the end of the game. A turn is divided into four phases: the Starting phase, the Serving phase, the Employ phase, and the Dismiss phase.

On each turn, a player is allotted one “serving” (which means playing one maid card) and one “employ” (which means buying a new card with “love” cards). Certain cards you purchase may grant you additional bonuses, such as additional servings, additional employs, the ability to draw cards, or extra love. Some cards are also worth victory points simply for having them. It’s beyond the scope of this review to detail what all of the cards do, but learning how they interact with each other is crucial to winning the game. For example, playing a maid card that gives you +1 serving means that you’ll be able to play another maid card on this turn. If you chain several of these together you can do even more. Playing cards in the proper order to maximize their potential is therefore very important.

Sample Maid card

The private maids are special. They each have an ability that occurs during the start phase of your turn and are worth positive or negative VP. The deck has 10 unique private maids, two of which are visible at a given time and only one of which may be employed on your turn even if you have gained extra employment capabilities from other maids. These maids are placed in your “private quarters”. These are cards that are no longer in your deck but still count at the end of the game for scoring purposes. When you employ a private maid, you may place her in your private quarters or in the private quarters of one of your opponents. Each player may only have one active private maid at a time, so employing a new one will replace any previous one, eliminating that maid’s special ability (but not the VP—positive or negative, those will be scored at the end of the game).

The game comes with 16 different types of general maids. 10 of these will be selected for use in the game. There is a recommended starter setup in the manual for beginners, but you can choose the 10 maids to be used randomly, by a draft, or whatever way your group decides. In this way, the game will be different every time you play. You’ll have to adjust your strategy appropriately based on the cards that are (or aren’t) available.

Tanto Cuore offers alternate paths to victory which is one of the things I really like about the game. Purchasing the high end Chief Maid will earn you 6 VP and is a significant way to gain points. However, the private maids are worth varying amounts of VP and some of the general maids are as well. Also, some of the maids are “chamber maids”. These maids can moved to your private quarters by using one or two servings, depending on the maid. Doing this not only gets them out of your deck—which as you’ll remember from above can be quite useful—but there is also a “set collection” mechanic introduced in this game where having either a certain quantity or a certain variety of maids in your quarters will earn you extra points at the end of the game. This, however, leads me to the other method of player interaction in the game: Events.

Bad habits involve frogs?

Illness cards may be played by your opponents on any of the maids in your private chamber. If a maid is still ill at the end of the game, she will be removed from play and her VPs will be lost. Also, she will not count in any of the sets she may have been a part of. Finally, if your private maid becomes ill, her special ability will not occur during your start phase. There are several ways to remove illness cards from your maids depending on the cards that are in play. Also, you can always choose to discard a “3 love” card to cure a maid, but this is a very painful choice since “3 love” cards cost 7 love to employ. Still, it might be worth it. Interestingly, you may also play an illness card on one of your own private maids if you don’t want the negative victory points or effects this maid has.

Finally, your maids may acquire “Bad Habits” from your opponents. Bad habits are worth -1 VP each at the end of the game unless you have four or more of them, in which case they are worth -2 VP each. Like illnesses, there are various ways to remove the Bad Habits from your private quarters.

The games ends when two of the maid piles have been depleted. Once this happens, the player who caused the game ending condition will finish her turn and the game is over. Sick maids are removed from the game and then victory points and bonuses are added up. Finally, the negative points for Bad Habits are applied. Whoever has the highest VP total is the “King of Maids”!

Artwork:

The cards in this game have extremely lovely artwork by 25 Japanese illustrators. Therefore, each card has a very unique look and style. While normally I would find this jarring in a game, I think it works very well here. In a way, it showcases the many different styles of drawing used in Japanese media. Who knew there were so many ways to draw a French maid?

My biggest concern was that the artwork was going to be too ecchi for me. While I don’t always have issues with ecchi, it’s not what I would be looking for in a game and it would make it difficult for me to introduce the game to my generally non-Otaku gaming group. Thankfully, most of the cards tend to be moe rather than ecchi. The maids all feel like real characters, even the more unusual ones like the “napping maid”. The love cards are a little suggestive and one of the private maids has a panty shot with a little more, ah, personal detail than I’d like, but I’ll give that a pass because the Esquine Forét card’s awesomeness totally makes up for it.

The recommended age on the box says 12 and up. I would say, like with anything, check it out first and then decide what’s best for your children.

Was that really necessary?

Tiny moe maid with extremely large weaponry! Yeah!

Drawbacks:

Like all deck building games, if you randomly select your cards you could end up with a combination that doesn’t work very well together. Conceivably, everyone’s final score could be negative. Generally this is not going to happen but it is something to consider.

Also, illnesses and bad habits are relatively cheap to inflict on other players, but very expensive (or impossible) to remove if the right cards are not in play. I don’t see this being a big problem, but it could frustrate some players. This wasn’t an issue in any of the games I played, but I could envision scenarios where it would be.

The only downside to the artwork is that the text is extremely small. You’ll definitely need to get your reading glasses out for this game.

Finally, the price. At $50 MSRP, it’s fairly expensive for what amounts to a large deck of cards. However, the street price at online shops is around $40 and when you consider that unlike CCGs and TCGs there are no booster packs and “rares” to be chasing after and thus no secondary market price inflation, it’s still a pretty good deal. Everything you need to play is in the box.

Conclusions:

Should you get this game? Yes! If you are fan of manga or anime (or a maid fetishist) and have not played games like this before, you might have a slightly steeper learning curve than your average hobby gamer but once you play through it a couple of times you should pick it up fairly easily. If you are a gamer and aren’t put off by the theme then I strongly suggest giving this game a try even if, like me, you aren’t a fan of Dominion. Tanto Cuore improves upon the core mechanics of a deck building game by adding alternate paths to victory and player interaction. The art is fantastic and the theme surprisingly works well even outside of Japan.

There are two expansions for the game which can be played alone or in addition to the cards in this game, but currently they are only available in Japan. The first expansion, Expanding the House, will be available from Japanime Games in early 2012.

Age: 12+
Length: 30-60 mins
# of players: 2 to 4

Designer: Masayuki Kudou
Pubisher: Arclight Games (Japan), Japanime Games (US)
Artists:

Tohru Adumi
CARNELIAN
COMTA
Takahito Ekuchi
Takuya Fujima
Takehito Harada
Akira Hayase
Kira Inugami
Ishigaa
kawaku
KEI
Souji Kusaka
Misa Matoki
Rin Minase
Miki Miyashita
Misoka Nagatsuki
Nana
Aoi Nanase
Hiroki Ozaki
Poyoyon Rock
Ruchie
Satoru Satou
Mushimaro Tachikawa
Yuiko Tokui
Ofuu Yamadori